LOGINSelena.The applause still echoed faintly through the ballroom even after I stepped away from the stage.Warm lights spilled across polished glass and marble, catching against the gold detailing along the walls of the hotel hall. Conversations blended around me—doctors, investors, hospital directors, journalists—all moving through the crowd with practiced smiles and expensive perfume.Seven years ago, none of this would have felt possible.Now people were offering me contracts worth more money than I had ever imagined touching as a student barely surviving sleepless nights, single parenthood, and grief.Renowned pediatric surgeon.The title still felt strange attached to me.“Dr. Vale, over here please!”Another camera flashed.I smiled politely before finally managing to step away from the growing crowd.Exhaustion settled into me almost immediately.Not physical exhaustion.Something deeper.The kind that came after years of surviving instead of living.The last seven years have gi
Talia.The packhouse had finally gone quiet by the time my mother came to my room.Hours earlier, the halls had been crowded with elders, guards, servants, and pack members, all eager to catch a glimpse of the child Denver had finally acknowledged publicly, but now the excitement had faded into silence, leaving behind only the occasional distant footstep and the low crackling sound of the fire burning near the far wall of my room.I stood in front of the mirror slowly removing my earrings, my fingers still slightly unsteady from exhaustion.Everything hurt.My body still felt weak from the labor, from the blood loss, from the fear that had sat so heavily inside my chest these past few months that sometimes it felt difficult to breathe around it.But tonight, beneath all of that exhaustion, there was relief.Relief so overwhelming it almost made me lightheaded.Denver had accepted Alec.Not reluctantly.Not cautiously.Completely.I had seen it happen the moment he touched him.The ent
Denver.My mother waited until the entire packhouse settled before cornering me.I should have expected it.The moment I stepped out of the nursery wing after handing the child back to Talia, I caught sight of her standing at the far end of the corridor watching me with narrowed eyes and far too much understanding behind them.She didn’t speak then.That look alone already told me the conversation was coming.Now, hours later, she stood inside my office holding a glass of untouched wine while I remained near the window overlooking the darkened grounds outside.Silence stretched between us heavily.Waiting.“You felt it.”It wasn't a question.I kept my eyes on the darkness beyond the glass.“Yes.”Her grip tightened slightly around the stem of the glass before she exhaled slowly.“I knew the moment you touched him.”That didn’t surprise me.My mother missed very little when it came to me, especially not where instinct was concerned.The change had been immediate. Violent enough that h
Denver.When they first told me Talia had gone into labor, I barely looked up from the report in my hand.“How far along?” I asked flatly.“Too early,” one of the guards answered. “Her mother is panicking.”That alone told me enough.I leaned back slowly in my chair, irritation settling deeper into my chest. The timing was inconvenient. The situation is even more so.“Take her to the pack clinic,” I said. “The healers there can handle it.”The guard hesitated slightly.“Her mother insists she should be taken to the human hospital instead. She says the birth is complicated.”Of course she did.I closed the file in front of me with more force than necessary.The entire situation already felt like a burden I never asked for.Talia had spent months insisting the child belonged to me while I spent those same months ignoring her attempts to force meaning into something I never believed in to begin with.There had been no real bond.Still, her mother refused to let the matter die quietly.“Sh
Selena. Cold. That was the first thing I noticed when I woke up, which was strange because I hardly ever got cold. Then came the sounds. A steady beeping somewhere close to me. The distant murmur of voices outside the room. The soft squeak of shoes moving across polished hospital floors. For a few long seconds, I lay there listening to it all, trapped somewhere between sleep and consciousness while my body struggled to catch up with my mind. When I finally tried to open my eyes, my eyelids felt unbearably heavy, and for one brief, terrifying moment panic flickered through me when they refused to cooperate immediately. But eventually they opened. White ceiling. Bright lights. Hospital. The memories returned slowly after that, arriving in broken fragments that pieced themselves together faster than I wanted them to. The contractions. The pain. Jameson’s voice is telling me to breathe. The operating theatre. Then— The babies. My entire body tensed instinctively. A dull
Jameson.By the time I stepped out of the operating theatre, the tension that had been holding my shoulders tight for hours finally eased, if only slightly.It had gone well.Better than I had allowed myself to expect.Selena was stable. The procedure had been clean, controlled, exactly the way it should have been, and the twins—Two healthy boys.I could still hear the sound of their cries in my head, sharp and alive, cutting through the sterile quiet of the theatre in a way that had grounded something in me I hadn’t realized was unsettled.For a brief moment, I allowed myself to picture it.Selena is waking up.The confusion first. Then the realization. Then that quiet, soft smile I had seen only a handful of times, the one she didn’t give easily.It would be worth it.Everything she had pushed through. The exhaustion. The fear she never fully voiced. The way she carried more than she should have, even before the pregnancy.For a moment, I almost felt… satisfied.Then the doors at th
Denver.I was heading back to my room that evening when a guard intercepted me.“Alpha… your mother would like to see you in the sitting room,” he said.I rubbed the bridge of my nose, trying to wipe away the fatigue that had settled into my bones after the endless meetings, the elders’ scrutiny, a
Selena.I stood at the window and looked out at the land below. From here, I could see how large Denver’s pack truly was.The buildings stretched far into the distance. Roads, lights, homes, training grounds, guard towers. It was bigger.More developed. More structured than the pack I had come from
Denver.I was halfway down the hall to my room when one of the guards walked up to me.“Alpha, Tiana was here asking for you,” he said. “She’s waiting.”I didn’t think twice. “Give her access.”The door to my room had barely shut behind me when I started pulling off my jacket. My body felt heavy, t
SelenaMorning came quietly.Not with noise or chaos, but with the soft movement of a house already awake. I could hear distant footsteps in the halls, low voices, and the sound of doors opening and closing somewhere far away. The pack house felt alive before I even left my bed.A maid arrived wit







